


Anticipation

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29595129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Drake tips his hand, but only a little.
Relationships: Basil Hawkins/X Drake
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: February Ficlet Challenge 2021: Apocalypse No





	Anticipation

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 20 of the February Ficlet Challenge: Horsemen

Hawkins arranges the three cards in the air without touching them, looks between them, one to another to a third. Each card shows a slightly different man on a horse, upside down. Drake doesn’t know what the three horsemen mean, nor what Hawkins will infer from them, nor whether or not they’re actually useful in that way to him. Perhaps it’s all a flourish, sleight of hand, a facade; perhaps the real way he draws inferences is through something else entirely. Or perhaps it’s just superstition. Or, perhaps, the numbers he uses are pulled out of his ass, and influence events through other people believing them. He’s impossible to read, and regardless of what the truth is, he’s probably leading Drake on to believe one or the other. 

(You’re overthinking, says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like one of his first superior officers, long-since retired, but not since Drake had outranked him, though he had usually been right about that.)

Without a word, Hawkins flicks his wrist and returns the cards to his hand.

“Anything interesting?” says Drake.

Hawkins shakes his head, the expression on his face unchanging, still. A bird chirps loudly outside. Drake adjusts his left glove. Hawkins’s eyes do not stray from his own hands, even momentarily, until Drake drops his hand onto Hawkins’s knee. Hawkins sighs, brief and dry and somehow theatrical, and reaches over to pat Drake’s hair. Drake feels as if he’s become an annoying pet, bothering his preoccupied owner for attention. Hawkins pats his cheek.

* * *

The day drags, like Drake’s tail on rocky ground, not enough to hurt but uncomfortable, slowing him down. Thinking about his tail makes him only want to transform, at least part of the way, and slam it down between Ulti and Page One because they’re in the middle of another one of their stupid arguments, voices growing louder as if they’re trying to make the other lose their voice (if only), and maybe the two of them enjoy it, but at the very least it’s completely unprofessional. (That is not to say any of the rest of them follow any sort of standard, but these two are the worst.)

Maybe he’s still thinking too much like a Marine. He shouldn’t forget, but he needs to blend in, at least for a little longer until things shake up. But are any of them really pirates? What’s piratical about being, essentially, government enforcers? And now he’s overthinking, and the clock on the wall has still barely moved, and if he had his tail right now it would be twitching. He rests his chin in one hand, tapping his fingers on the side of his mask. The sound of leather on leather is much more palatable than the arguing, but even this close to his ear it won’t drown their voices out.

* * *

There is someone else’s blood on Hawkins’s wrist and chest when he returns in the evening, sloppier than he usually lets himself get. At least his day seems to have been more interesting and productive than Drake’s. As he stands at the sink scrubbing himself, Drake wraps his arms around Hawkins’s waist. Cool water drips down on his bare wrists. Hawkins doesn’t shove him away. 

“You’re making this difficult, you know.”

“I could help you.”

“There’s nothing erotic about this,” says Hawkins.

(There could be, Drake wants to say, but how is he so transparent? Better to be transparent about this than about his other motives, but will Hawkins eventually decipher those, untie Drake’s hasty, sweeping lies with his straw soldiers? This has always been risky, but here, now, it feels unbearably so, unbearably stupid, unbearably worth it despite his feet at the edge, like being on a staircase for which his feet are too big. Or maybe this is what Hawkins had seen in the cards.)

Hawkins finishes cleaning himself, then twists around, his hair moving in a straw curtain, bringing his cold hands up to Drake’s neck. He waits for Drake to kiss him, because he knows Drake will, and Drake wonders what he could do to make Hawkins tip his hand a little bit in return. He knows Hawkins, but doesn’t know him, slides off him like a frictionless surface every time he lands. Isn’t that better? Is it any less frustrating? 

At least he knows what Hawkins wants out of sex, hair pulled, nipples twisted, Drake’s own skin offered up in return, perfect scratch marks on his back, Hawkins biting into his shoulder when he comes, like a comic-book vampire. His cheeks are red; there is sweat beading at his hairline. He rolls on top of Drake and kisses him, and there’s nothing obligatory or placating about it at all.

* * *

Drake lies with his head in Hawkins’s lap, his body half-tangled in the bedcovers. The ruffles on Hawkins’s open shirt drag across his hair, and Drake closes his eyes. He’s not ready to sleep yet, but he’s tired, despite the relative lack of movement in the day, the tedious routine of earlier, the tension in his back from leaning over and the ache on his shoulder from where Hawkins had bitten it earlier. Hawkins draws two cards from his deck this time, and from this angle Drake can’t see them all too well when he opens his eyes again, but they don’t look like the ones from this morning (no horses, anyway).

“Should I move?”

“No. It’s useful to have your energies when I read the situation.”

Earlier in the day, Drake would have worried about that, about what that might reveal to Hawkins. But now, he thinks, perhaps the worry itself reveals more than the cards do. Even if there’s something meaningful in the designs and patterns, there might be something else in a reaction, in a situation. Or he might be overthinking again. Hawkins’s hand comes to rest in his hair, sweeping aside the fabric of his shirt. 

“How are the odds looking?” Drake says.

He twists his neck a little, to see Hawkins’s face, a small smile playing on his lips.

“Better than expected.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Hawkins's reading for Drake in the first scene: [reversed knight of cups](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-cups/knight-of-cups/), [reversed knight of pentacles](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-pentacles/knight-of-pentacles/), [reversed knight of swords](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-swords/knight-of-swords/)


End file.
